09-15-2007, 08:09 PM
<b>'Ex-Muslims' demand right to leave Islam</b>
September 13, 2007
http://www.expressi ndia.com/ news/fullstory. php?newsid= 92044
The Hague: A 22-year-old Dutch-Iranian will launch a campaign on
Tuesday for Muslims to have the right to renounce their faith and find
support from peers, a view which has made him the victim of three
physical attacks.
Although similar initiatives have started elsewhere in Europe, Ehsan
Jami's group has stirred intense interest in the Netherlands, which
has one million Muslims, and has re-ignited the country's
highly-emotive Islam debate. "We have an enormous problem with
apostasy in Islam. We see a lot of problems where people want to leave
Islam but they can't," Jami said in an interview, while body guards
stood watch at the door.
"There are five sharia schools in Islam which say if you leave Islam
you must be killed," he said. Apostasy is punishable by death or
imprisonment in some Muslim countries and deplored throughout the
Islamic world.
His "Committee for Ex-Muslims" wants imams and Muslims to recognise
fellow Muslims' right to leave their faith, and to respect freedom of
religion. Jami's blunt criticism of Islam, which he likens to fascism
and Nazism, has offended many Dutch Muslims, and earned comparisons to
the rhetoric of Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders, whose
party holds 9 of 150 seats in parliament.
"People think I am a radical. They think I hate Muslims, but ... it is
the ideology which is the problem and not the people themselves."
News of an attack on Jami in August by suspected Islamists caused
outcry in the country, where a filmmaker critical of Islam was
murdered in an Amsterdam street three years ago and where several
high-profile lawmakers are guarded after death threats.
It also put issues of Islam, tolerance and integration uppermost in
peoples' minds after a period of unprecedented social tension in the
Netherlands looked to have eased.
On Monday a separate group of "Ex-Muslims" said they disagreed with
Jami's methods and he had only succeeded in polarising communities.
"We defend the right to be able to walk away from any religion,
including Islam. But they are using that right as a cover to
categorically insult Muslims and to stigmatise them as 'violent' and
'terrorists' ", said former Muslim Behnam Taebi in a statement.
Prominent Dutch imams have also taken issue with Jami's reading of the
Koran and invited him to hold talks.
Jami will launch his campaign alongside representatives of other
European ex-Muslim groups. Similar committees have been formed this
year in Britain, Germany and Sweden.
The murder in November 2004 of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a
Dutch-Moroccan Muslim militant and the work of former Dutch lawmaker
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had made the Dutch particularly alert among Europeans
to the dangers of intolerance in Islam, he said.
September 13, 2007
http://www.expressi ndia.com/ news/fullstory. php?newsid= 92044
The Hague: A 22-year-old Dutch-Iranian will launch a campaign on
Tuesday for Muslims to have the right to renounce their faith and find
support from peers, a view which has made him the victim of three
physical attacks.
Although similar initiatives have started elsewhere in Europe, Ehsan
Jami's group has stirred intense interest in the Netherlands, which
has one million Muslims, and has re-ignited the country's
highly-emotive Islam debate. "We have an enormous problem with
apostasy in Islam. We see a lot of problems where people want to leave
Islam but they can't," Jami said in an interview, while body guards
stood watch at the door.
"There are five sharia schools in Islam which say if you leave Islam
you must be killed," he said. Apostasy is punishable by death or
imprisonment in some Muslim countries and deplored throughout the
Islamic world.
His "Committee for Ex-Muslims" wants imams and Muslims to recognise
fellow Muslims' right to leave their faith, and to respect freedom of
religion. Jami's blunt criticism of Islam, which he likens to fascism
and Nazism, has offended many Dutch Muslims, and earned comparisons to
the rhetoric of Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders, whose
party holds 9 of 150 seats in parliament.
"People think I am a radical. They think I hate Muslims, but ... it is
the ideology which is the problem and not the people themselves."
News of an attack on Jami in August by suspected Islamists caused
outcry in the country, where a filmmaker critical of Islam was
murdered in an Amsterdam street three years ago and where several
high-profile lawmakers are guarded after death threats.
It also put issues of Islam, tolerance and integration uppermost in
peoples' minds after a period of unprecedented social tension in the
Netherlands looked to have eased.
On Monday a separate group of "Ex-Muslims" said they disagreed with
Jami's methods and he had only succeeded in polarising communities.
"We defend the right to be able to walk away from any religion,
including Islam. But they are using that right as a cover to
categorically insult Muslims and to stigmatise them as 'violent' and
'terrorists' ", said former Muslim Behnam Taebi in a statement.
Prominent Dutch imams have also taken issue with Jami's reading of the
Koran and invited him to hold talks.
Jami will launch his campaign alongside representatives of other
European ex-Muslim groups. Similar committees have been formed this
year in Britain, Germany and Sweden.
The murder in November 2004 of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a
Dutch-Moroccan Muslim militant and the work of former Dutch lawmaker
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had made the Dutch particularly alert among Europeans
to the dangers of intolerance in Islam, he said.